Which company gets forced to break up first?

godawgst

Apple: 57B in profits. 12 more than #2 Microsoft.

Facebook: 50% of all people on Earth who have a computer have an account with them (approx)

Google: 90% of all internet searches done go thru them

Amazon: 40% of all on-line purchases are done with them.

alumni94

Well, Google is already Alphabet. So I go with Apple.

greenblood

Amazon.

Apple still has strong competition in the cell phone industry. There's only 3 serious contenders in a pie with 300m units in the US alone.

Google is a strong candidate, but I don't think there is much of a bearer to entry in this market. I just don't think the search engine business is as profitable as it used to be. Google does a lot of other things that add to the bottom line.

Amazon is going to be first, because it's not only creating a bearer to enter into it's space, it's also disrupting both the retail and shipping industries. Amazon is the primary reason malls are closing left and right; they are also infringing on UPS, Fedex, and USPS.

HoustonHusky

Amazon (and then probably Google). Amazon makes the most sense because of its structure...Amazon Web Services as a stand-alone business is probably worth over half a trillion. They may just split it off before being forced to, but it is funding a lot of other Bezos pet projects.

Allows everyone to take a scalp without actually addressing the monopoly aspect of any of them.

Pitchfork51

Amazon

MikeDamone

I hate it when companies give people what they want quickly, efficiently and inexpensively. These monsters must be stopped by the government.

I remember my not letting the market to decide phase.

http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2008/07/nokia_the_dominant_global_computing_monopoly_by_2011_discuss.html

godawgst

HoustonHusky said:

Amazon (and then probably Google). Amazon makes the most sense because of its structure...Amazon Web Services as a stand-alone business is probably worth over half a trillion. They may just split it off before being forced to, but it is funding a lot of other Bezos pet projects.

Allows everyone to take a scalp without actually addressing the monopoly aspect of any of them.

Amazon will fight it the most b/c AWS (along with Prime} helps hide how little Amazon truly makes in on-line sales

HoustonHusky

godawgst said:

HoustonHusky said:

Amazon (and then probably Google). Amazon makes the most sense because of its structure...Amazon Web Services as a stand-alone business is probably worth over half a trillion. They may just split it off before being forced to, but it is funding a lot of other Bezos pet projects.

Allows everyone to take a scalp without actually addressing the monopoly aspect of any of them.

Amazon will fight it the most b/c AWS (along with Prime} helps hide how little Amazon truly makes in on-line sales

Yeah, but you'd be keeping Prime with Amazon proper, and with them probably gouging their sellers on the shipping side I'm sure they will be fine. Read somewhere a while back Costco makes basically nothing on all their sales...their entire profit margin is their membership fees. Prime has something like 115 million members...at a $150/year that's more "profit" for Amazon than they have ever recorded (I know...not like-for-like because of video and some of the other perks/etc just more for argument's sake). You get even a small margin on their sales revenues and they will be printing money for a long time...I'd argue the bigger worry for them is if/when their growth in sales slows down from market saturation or competition but it hasn't happened yet and probably won't for a while.

FireCohen

Amazon should be first one to be broken up, but it has bought a lot goodwill with the whole pandemics bs and ppl generally love it. Going to be hard to build the political momentum to break it up

pawz

greenblood said:

Amazon.

Apple still has strong competition in the cell phone industry. There's only 3 serious contenders in a pie with 300m units in the US alone.

Google is a strong candidate, but I don't think there is much of a bearer to entry in this market. I just don't think the search engine business is as profitable as it used to be. Google does a lot of other things that add to the bottom line.

Amazon is going to be first, because it's not only creating a bearer to enter into it's space, it's also disrupting both the retail and shipping industries. Amazon is the primary reason malls are closing left and right; they are also infringing on UPS, Fedex, and USPS.

People forget that it's was Standard Oil's relationships with the railroads that ultimately got it broken up.

Tequilla

I'd be shocked if Amazon isn't broken up in the next 5 years ... I suspect that AWS will be broken out as a stand-alone at minimum.

Blu82

If Trump wins in November I'm betting that Amazon is the 1st to fall.
Bezos buying the WaPo might not have been his smartest decision.

godawgst

Tequilla said:

I'd be shocked if Amazon isn't broken up in the next 5 years ... I suspect that AWS will be broken out as a stand-alone at minimum.

Originally that was my thought as well, but AWS along with Prime Memberships could make up 90% of their overall profits.

What is the mothership of a standalone Amazon's stock worth if they truly peel back the onion and find they sell 50 billion worth of merchandise every 3 months and make next to nothing doing so?

Tequilla

Prime = Consumer

AWS = Corporate

Problem solved

creepycoug

HoustonHusky said:

godawgst said:

HoustonHusky said:

Amazon (and then probably Google). Amazon makes the most sense because of its structure...Amazon Web Services as a stand-alone business is probably worth over half a trillion. They may just split it off before being forced to, but it is funding a lot of other Bezos pet projects.

Allows everyone to take a scalp without actually addressing the monopoly aspect of any of them.

Amazon will fight it the most b/c AWS (along with Prime} helps hide how little Amazon truly makes in on-line sales

Yeah, but you'd be keeping Prime with Amazon proper, and with them probably gouging their sellers on the shipping side I'm sure they will be fine. Read somewhere a while back Costco makes basically nothing on all their sales...their entire profit margin is their membership fees. Prime has something like 115 million members...at a $150/year that's more "profit" for Amazon than they have ever recorded (I know...not like-for-like because of video and some of the other perks/etc just more for argument's sake). You get even a small margin on their sales revenues and they will be printing money for a long time...I'd argue the bigger worry for them is if/when their growth in sales slows down from market saturation or competition but it hasn't happened yet and probably won't for a while.

I think this is essentially true from all I've heard as well. I used to do a lot of work for them and their people would always tell me that their think margins wasn't bullshit.

creepycoug

MikeDamone said:

I hate it when companies give people what they want quickly, efficiently and inexpensively. These monsters must be stopped by the government.

I remember my not letting the market to decide phase.

http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2008/07/nokia_the_dominant_global_computing_monopoly_by_2011_discuss.html

I'm conflicted. Intellectually, what you say is true. But I always thought the efficiency of the market was predicated on competition. When any company gets so big that they stymie competition, we? have a problem. You hear different accounts, but Microsoft was buying and killing anything that resembled competition for years. It became a fundamental aspect of their business model, and people inside would tell me they were becoming like the Big 3 before Japanese imports forced their reinvention.

I was offered a GC spot at a regional bank once, and over lunch with their guy in charge of, you know, banking, asked him what their #1 threat is, expecting him to cite some other bank or some shitty regulatory trend or some obvious macro-economic trend. He just popped off with "Amazon". They live in fear of Amazon just deciding to get into the residential or commercial, or both, lending business.

It occured to me that they could do it if they wanted to, and I wondered how healthy it would be for the economy for one centrally-run bidness to have that much control over such a wide range of goods and services.

Anyway, I have no definitive opinion about this, but my instincts are always that moar competition is better than less.

BleachedAnusDawg

Amazon is quickly becoming our Brawndo.

FireCohen

creepycoug said:

MikeDamone said:

I hate it when companies give people what they want quickly, efficiently and inexpensively. These monsters must be stopped by the government.

I remember my not letting the market to decide phase.

http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2008/07/nokia_the_dominant_global_computing_monopoly_by_2011_discuss.html

I'm conflicted. Intellectually, what you say is true. But I always thought the efficiency of the market was predicated on competition. When any company gets so big that they stymie competition, we? have a problem. You hear different accounts, but Microsoft was buying and killing anything that resembled competition for years. It became a fundamental aspect of their business model, and people inside would tell me they were becoming like the Big 3 before Japanese imports forced their reinvention.

I was offered a GC spot at a regional bank once, and over lunch with their guy in charge of, you know, banking, asked him what their #1 threat is, expecting him to cite some other bank or some shitty regulatory trend or some obvious macro-economic trend. He just popped off with "Amazon". They live in fear of Amazon just deciding to get into the residential or commercial, or both, lending business.

It occured to me that they could do it if they wanted to, and I wondered how healthy it would be for the economy for one centrally-run bidness to have that much control over such a wide range of goods and services.

Anyway, I have no definitive opinion about this, but my instincts are always that moar competition is better than less.

GE got fucking massive with it’s ge capital nonsense and really too big had to be chopped down. Pretty sure will something of similar effect eventually